Skelton, T. (2010). Taking young people as political actors seriously: opening the borders of political geography. Area, 42(2), 145–151. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4762.2009.00891.x

Tracey Skelton finds that it is in the liminal political spaces that children occupy that offers great opportunity for Political Geography to operate.  She points out how children often occupy the liminal legal spaces as they are held to some responsibilities and liabilities, but are yet to be accorded the full rights and privileges that accompany adulthood such as driving and voting. Children also operate in the ambiguous spaces in what she calls Politics — participating in formal decision making structures — and the politics of everyday actions that influencing the shape of society. Skelton believes that it is because of young people’s liminal position that makes them interesting political geography subjects.

The Political Geography literature has largely been mute on the role of young people, casting them as political subjects ‘in waiting’ rather then current political actors. In her analysis of Political Geography journals, Skelton believes that the field only addresses the impact of political policies, practices, and discourse on young people without acknowledging their active engagement as agents. Since Political Geography has “broadened its focus away from just the state to include organizations endowed with political power that can be inscribed in space” and come to recognize the geography of power, then young people’s place in it should also be researched, theorized, and analyzed. This new Political Geography then should acknowledge “the political power young people yield through their practices, resistance, strategies and challenges” (Skelton, 2010).

Therese O’Toole shows that research on young peoples political engagement often only uses the narrow definition of Politics (2003).  Interestingly, discussion of young peoples and Politics are often appended with notes on their apathy towards Politics and thus a harbinger of the future democracy based upon representation. But once children and young people are seen in the space of politics, their place in the participation and engagement with discourse and action that changes the political, economic, social, and cultural landscape is evident. When political geographers don’t acknowledge young people’s activities in politics, it close its eyes to those spaces of everyday life that are linked to the development of political life and identities. Philo and Smith posit that it is in the intersections between Politics and politics that political geographies of children and young people work best (2003).

Although some geographers show that young people are often associated with the local, they are also intricately engage with national and/or global political issues as well. Just like adults, children wrestle with the complexities, contradictions and tensions of political expression.  Rather than demonstrating that children are incapable of political engagement, it illustrates that young people are “equally as sophisticated, complex and inconsistent in their political beliefs and expressions as adults can be” (Skelton, 2010). The added layer that makes the analysis of children in political spaces even more interesting is the power dynamic between children and adults.